April 18, 2008

My first instinct was to keep this review short and sweet, but I realized that “holy shit” wasn’t going to be a particularly useful take on the situation. So, I’ll elaborate.

I’ve never been in a good position to build a solid home stereo setup. On one hand it’s a bit of an investment, and to make it worth while I needed to spend more time in an environment where I can listen to my music without bothering other people. On the other hand, soliciting information from the “audiophile” crowd is akin to drinking from a fire hose of terrible lies and fairy tales.

Never the less, I like music that sounds good (who doesn’t?). One of my first jobs was working as an assistant A/V engineer, and I have friends and family members who are professional musicians, engineers, and aficionados. I’ve been around and flirted with high quality audio most of my life, so it’s inevitable that I’d finally break down and put something together a system for myself.

Every now and then, serendipity strikes. I first heard of Aperion a couple of years ago, when one of my friends mentioned he’d gone to work for a speaker company here in town. I started pestering him about the job and the gear, and he had nothing but good things to say about the people and product. There seemed to be a lot of other people out there who agreed with him — and did so without pretentious trimmings.

A couple months ago I moved out of a shared office space and into my own home office. For the first time in a long time, I had a private space and a bit of a budget. Around the same time, Aperion released a new product line. Today I went to their office, had a listen, and walked out with a couple of fair sized boxes: a pair of Intimus 5B bookshelf speakers, and a Bravus 8D sub.

I’ve run through a pretty good cross section of my music today — Hifana, The Flaming Lips, Elliott Smith, Radiohead, Pixies, NoFX, Muse, Bruce Springsteen, Beck, Arctic Monkeys, Autechre, The Shins, Soul Coughing, Thelonious Monk, and even a little Beethoven and Prokofiev for good measure.

Back to my original review: Holy shit, my face hurts from smiling. I’m not going pile on the flowery language and esoteric metaphors about how it sounds, and I’m certainly not going to take advantage of Aperion’s 30 day return policy. The 5Bs are a pleasure to listen to, and the 8D fills out the bottom octaves wonderfully.

My only advice to people considering Aperion speakers? Ask them about getting a deal on returned or refurbished items, and spend the money you save on more good music!